Asked by: Freddie van Mierlo (Liberal Democrat - Henley and Thame)
Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:
To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, what the annual expenditure by the UK Research and Innovation on research workforce development programmes, including fellowships, training awards and capacity-building initiatives, was in each financial year from 2019–20 to 2024–25; and what proportion of that expenditure was allocated to (a) dementia, (b) cancer, (c) stroke and (d) coronary heart disease research, where such categorisation is held.
Answered by Kanishka Narayan - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Science, Innovation and Technology)
UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) supports and encourages the development of researchers’ skills and knowledge at all career stages across all its investments through dedicated skills, talents, and training investments.
The table below shows total annual UKRI spend from 2019-20 to 2024-25. Data relating to capacity-building initiatives is not recorded by UKRI.
Total UKRI Spend (£M) | 2019-20 | 2020-21 | 2021-22 | 2022-23 | 2023-24 | 2024-25 |
Training grants | 414 | 429 | 415.7 | 421.1 | 436.2 | 465.5 |
Fellowships | 165.1 | 217.2 | 223.9 | 260.1 | 261.1 | 282.7 |
Total | 579.1 | 646.2 | 639.6 | 681.2 | 697.3 | 748.2 |
Expenditure breakdowns are not available for dementia, cancer, stroke and coronary heart disease research.
Asked by: Chris Bloore (Labour - Redditch)
Question to the Department for Business and Trade:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business and Trade, what assessment he has made of the potential impact of sector-specific industrial clusters on the number of high-growth start ups.
Answered by Blair McDougall - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade)
Making the UK the best place to start and grow a business is central to the Government’s growth mission. The UK has a deep start-up talent pool and according to Dealroom’s European Spinouts Report 2025, the UK has half of the top ten universities in Europe for spin-outs.
The Industrial Strategy focuses on eight growth-driving sectors and the city regions and clusters across the UK where they concentrate, as detailed in its Technical Annex. We are supporting sectoral strengths such as in the Oxford to Cambridge Growth Corridor, including with a £20m Local Innovation Partnership Fund award focused on autonomous vehicles, high-performance engineering and space technology.
The Strategy included a significant uplift in the British Business Bank’s financial capacity to £25.6bn. Annual investments of around £2.5bn each year will crowd-in billions of additional private capital and support UK businesses to start, scale and stay in the UK.
Asked by: Richard Holden (Conservative - Basildon and Billericay)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, with reference to the Answer of 9 January 2026 to Question 100955, what programmes the Civil Aviation Authority is engaged in to support airspace modernisation and sustainable aviation fuel take-up in line with the 2050 Net Zero target; and what the financial cost of those programmes is to the public purse.
Answered by Keir Mather - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)
The CAA are involved in a variety of Airspace Modernisation programmes, including administering the Airspace Modernisation Support Fund (ASF). The ASF is funded through the UK State overflight charging mechanism for commercial air transport.
DfT is also supporting the CAA’s Hydrogen in Aviation Challenge until at least March 2027 to help innovative companies work with the regulator on this emerging technology.
Asked by: Victoria Collins (Liberal Democrat - Harpenden and Berkhamsted)
Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:
To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, what recent assessment her Department has made of the role of social media companies in facilitating online fraud and scams.
Answered by Kanishka Narayan - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Science, Innovation and Technology)
Online platforms, including social media, are being exploited by criminals to commit crime. Data from the banking and financial services sector suggests 53% of authorised push payment (APP) fraud cases in 2023 involved social media, messaging and call platforms, 13% auction, purchase and listing platforms, and 12% telecommunications platforms.
The Online Safety Act lists fraud as a priority offence. This means that in-scope social media providers must prevent and minimise fraudulent content from appearing on their services and swiftly remove it if it does. Platforms must also manage the risk their service being used by criminals to commit fraud or other financial crimes.
Asked by: Mike Wood (Conservative - Kingswinford and South Staffordshire)
Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:
To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, with reference to the policy paper entitled EM on a report on implementation of the TCA (COM(2026)166), published on 15 May 2026, para 12, what the estimated cost is of the strengthened UK participation in Pillars II and III of Horizon.
Answered by Kanishka Narayan - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Science, Innovation and Technology)
In the current financial year the UK has allocated £2.1 billion for association to EU programmes, this includes association to Horizon Europe, Copernicus, and the Horizon Guarantee. This covers access to the entire programme including pillars 2 and 3, giving our researchers and businesses the ability to participate confidently in the world's largest research and innovation programme. Thanks to constructive collaboration between the UK and the EU, the vast majority of the limited exclusions we faced on sensitive technology calls have been lifted.
Asked by: Bob Blackman (Conservative - Harrow East)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, with reference to the Answer of 4 February 2026 to Question 907723 on Proof of Identity: Digital Technology, how much was spent on digital ID receive in the 2025-2026 financial year; and what is the proposed spend for the 2026-2027 financial year.
Answered by James Frith - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Science, Innovation and Technology)
The Digital ID spend so far has been limited to the early stage of the policy development. The feedback and outcomes from the consultation will now inform our final approach, design and costs.
Asked by: Vikki Slade (Liberal Democrat - Mid Dorset and North Poole)
Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:
To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, if she will take steps to require telecommunications providers to bear financial responsibility for losses arising from scam and spoofed telephone calls to improve accountability under Ofcom’s regulatory framework.
Answered by Kanishka Narayan - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Science, Innovation and Technology)
The Government has no plans to require telecommunications providers to bear financial responsibility for losses arising from scam and spoofed telephone calls.
Tackling fraud and pursuing the criminals behind it is a priority for the Government. We are working closely with industry, law enforcement and consumer groups to identify and prosecute criminal activity of this nature.
The Government works closely with Ofcom, the independent regulator, which has a duty to protect consumers and to ensure that UK numbers are not misused. Ofcom has powers to set and enforce rules requiring providers to take steps to prevent fraud and protect consumers, including measures to block scam calls.
In addition, the Government and industry are taking forward collective action through initiatives such as the Telecommunications Fraud Sector Charter and the Fraud Strategy, which set out measures to strengthen the security, traceability and reliability of calls and tackle spoofing.
Asked by: Ian Sollom (Liberal Democrat - St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what steps her Department has taken to improve accessibility to online banking for blind and partially sighted people.
Answered by Rachel Blake - Economic Secretary (HM Treasury)
The Government is committed to ensuring that everyone can access and use financial services.
Financial services providers are bound under the Equality Act 2010 to make reasonable adjustments, where necessary, in the way they deliver their services. UK banks’ and building societies’ treatment of their customers is regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), which requires firms to provide a prompt, efficient and fair service to all customers.
The FCA’s Consumer Duty seeks to raise the standard expected from firms for all customers. It aims to ensure firms deliver products and services that offer fair value and are designed to meet customers’ needs, and that they are increasingly focused on delivering good outcomes and preventing harm.
For example, from a financial inclusion perspective, the Consumer Duty seeks to prevent consumers with characteristics of vulnerability from being unable to access and use a product because the customer support is not accessible to them.
In practice, firms are expected to consider how they provide services to customers who are unable to use specific processes, such as biometric or digital identity verification, and to ensure that appropriate alternative approaches are available where needed.
More widely, the Government published its Financial Inclusion Strategy last year which sets out a range of ambitious measures for government and industry to improve financial inclusion for underserved groups across the UK. This includes a focus on access to banking and accessibility, with interventions to make it easier for blind and partially sighted people to pay by card and to make financial products more accessible through an inclusive design working group.
The Department for Science, Innovation, and Technology (DSIT) also published their Digital Inclusion Action Plan last year, which sets out Government’s first steps towards our ambition of delivering digital inclusion for everyone across the UK. This seeks to address wider digital barriers, including improving digital skills and confidence, widening access to devices and connectivity, and providing support through local communities.
Asked by: Vikki Slade (Liberal Democrat - Mid Dorset and North Poole)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will take steps to increase funding for research into Parkinson's disease.
Answered by Preet Kaur Gill - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
Government responsibility for delivering Parkinson’s disease research is shared between the Department of Health and Social Care, with research delivered by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR), and the Department of Science, Innovation and Technology, with research delivered via UK Research and Innovation.
The Government is strongly committed to supporting research into Parkinson’s disease to support prevention, diagnosis, treatment, and care.
This includes, for example, the world’s largest clinical trial of treatments to slow or stop the progression of Parkinson’s disease, which opened for recruitment in October 2025. This trial aims to recruit 1,600 participants in its first phase from more than 40 hospitals across the United Kingdom. The £26 million EJS ACT-PD trial is co-funded by the NIHR, the Medical Research Council, and multiple Parkinson’s charities.
The NIHR is also investing £20 million over four years into the UK Dementia Research Institute (UK DRI). The UK DRI, primarily funded by the Government, is partnering with Parkinson’s UK to establish a new £10 million research centre dedicated to better understanding the causes of Parkinson’s and finding new treatments.
As well as funding research itself, the Department of Health and Social Care invests significantly in research expertise and capacity, specialist facilities, support services, and collaborations to support and deliver research in England, known as NIHR infrastructure. NIHR infrastructure underpins research, enabling the country’s leading experts to develop and deliver high-quality translational, clinical and applied research, including research into Parkinson’s disease.
It is not the usual process of the NIHR to allocate funds for research into specific conditions. The NIHR welcomes funding applications for research into any aspect of human health and care, including Parkinson’s disease. Our approach to funding research is through open and fair competition and peer review to ensure that the highest-quality proposals, most likely to deliver real impact for patients, are funded without imposing financial targets or limits.
Asked by: Lord Taylor of Warwick (Non-affiliated - Life peer)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the need for standardised or independent testing of general purpose AI models used by regulated financial institutions.
Answered by Lord Livermore - Financial Secretary (HM Treasury)
The Government’s ambition is to make the UK a global leader in AI. Encouraging safe adoption is an essential part of realising that ambition and we will continue to work closely with regulators and industry to ensure innovation proceeds safely and responsibly in the financial sector.
UK regulated financial firms are required to manage technology-related risks to consumers and financial stability, including those related to the use of AI models. This is required under existing rules for risk management, governance and accountability. HM Treasury and the regulators keep this approach under review as new technologies develop to ensure that the framework remains effective in light of new risks.
Alongside this, our UK AI Security Institute provides world-leading frontier model testing, and is focused on building a rigorous, scientific understanding of the most serious risks.